“老虎母亲”型故事之流变——以汉族与朝鲜族的民间故事为中心

"老虎母亲"型故事是具有世界意义的著名民间故事。从故事分布状况看,汉族和朝鲜族的"老虎母亲"型故事都覆盖其全域;从故事的形式上看,汉族的"老虎母亲"型故事属于"惩治"型,朝鲜族的"老虎母亲"型故事则属于"日月由来"型;在文化意蕴上,汉族的故事体现出不屈不挠的斗争意识和善必胜恶的乐观精神,而朝鲜族的故事则表现出基于固有巫俗信仰的"神人相通"、"通神求生"的意识观念。     

两种文化的融合、冲突与变迁——读辛格的《卢布林的魔术师》和《童爱》

解读辛格的《卢布林的魔术师》和《童爱》两部小说,分析犹太格托和格托精神,认为美国犹太小说是对犹太文化的反衬,折射出犹太文化进入美国社会,是对美国本土文化的融合,并在碰撞中得到了发展和升华。     

文化身份的消解、重建与回归——以欧茨小说《掘墓人的女儿》为例

欧茨小说《掘墓人的女儿》讲述了主人公丽贝卡在美国隐藏犹太身份、追寻美国身份、回归犹太身份的故事,为我们揭示了犹太移民终其一生在反犹环境下寻求文化身份的心路历程。本文从文化身份的视角,探讨了导致丽贝卡身份变迁的主要原因：第一,丽贝卡从隐藏犹太身份到追寻美国身份并不是美国文化简单地消解、同化犹太文化的结果,而是犹太文化与美国文化的历史汇合;第二,丽贝卡回归犹太身份也不意味着犹太移民对美国文化的否定,而是其在理解自己的历史与现实的基础上的自我抉择,即犹太文化始终以各种方式制约、规范和影响着美国犹太移民。     

Jewish epitaphs from Białystok, 1892–1902: embracing the spirit of Dubnow

In the early twentieth century, Polish historian Mejer Ba?aban delivered a most telling condemnation of Jewish epitaphs as “blatantly baroque,” “overloaded with epithets” and difficult to understand. In the late nineteenth century, the maskil Simon Dubnow had delivered a plea to the maskilim (intellectuals) and mithnagdim (traditionalists) of his day to engage in documenting and writing the woefully lacking past history of Yiddish civilisation as a means to unite past history with emerging nationalistic inclinations. Dubnow specified gathering epitaphs as part of this documentation. Despite Dubnow's plea it is Ba?aban's condemnation that has held sway in American and English-speaking European academies and which has not yet been fully reversed in the scholarship of the century since then. In the spirit of Dubnow, the current paper examines the first decade of extant epitaphs from Bagnowka Beth Olam in Bia?ystok, Poland, dating from 1892 to 1902, as an example by which we can move towards establishing the potential that Jewish epitaphs hold as another evidentiary source corroborating or enriching Jewish history. In this first decade of epitaphs from Bagnowka Beth Olam, we will encounter the world of the mithnagdim amidst which the minority of the maskilim are in evidence. Place names bring remembrance of the cities, towns and shtetlekh from which Jews migrated to Bia?ystok. Surnames evoke remembrance of founding families that would continue to build Jewish Bia?ystok in the coming decades. Unexpected historical and biographical details remind the reader of the professions and businesses in which Bia?ystoker Jews engaged and life's circumstances that prompted charitable responses. Subtle words or a unique phrase, intentionally or unintentionally incorporated into the epitaphs, are telling of the realities of the harshness of everyday life at the turn of the twentieth century and telling of what is significant to both individual and collective memory. One singular epitaph serves as a portent of the violence that would soon descend upon Bia?ystok. Through these representative examples we are offered a microcosm of Jewish Bia?ystok from 1892 to 1902, and a glimpse of the changing trends to be revealed in the next five decades as written upon the matzevoth of Bagnowka Beth Olam.     

Sir Moses Montefiore's 1846 visit to Vil'na and its reflection in local maskilic literature

This article discusses the 1846 visit of the leading Anglo-Jewish figure Sir Moses Montefiore to Vil'na in the Russian Empire. Invited by leading figures of the city's Jewish community, Montefiore had a broader agenda at hand – the investigation of Jewish education in the empire. The visit had a profound and enduring effect on the Jews of Vil'na. This was reflected in the varying literary responses, especially among the city's maskilim. It forms the central theme of this article.     

Taking and giving: the case of the JDC and OZE in Lithuania 1919–26

This article examines the conditions that facilitated the activity of the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Lithuania during the early 1920s. In particular, it discusses the interaction between the JDC and the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jews (OZE). It demonstrates that, unlike in other countries, the JDC's involvement in Lithuania went beyond the conventional development of policies and controlling budgets. The JDC practically took over the health section of the Lithuanian Jewish National Council and implemented its own policies. This step was possible due to the unique political situation of Jews in Lithuania and the fact that the OZE centre in Vilna was detached from the rest of that organisation's activists. This study demonstrates the importance of close analysis of specific localities when dealing with the history of philanthropy and the politics of taking and giving in Eastern Europe during the interwar era.     

A note on shtetl definitions and the dating of the first shtetl

Consideration of two different working definitions of a shtetl, and the two different datings of the first shtetl that they produce, leads to the following conclusions. (1) The definition of a shtetl is formed by a set of criteria, one of which distinguishes it from similar settlements by providing a characteristic termed “sufficient Jewishness.” Because “sufficient Jewishness” exists in multiple forms, such as “at least 40% Jewish population,” and “the presence of certain specified institutions of religious observance,” a number of valid definitions can coexist. (2) The dating of the earliest shtetl will vary from one study to another, because it is determined by the selected definition of a shtetl used to arrive at that dating, and ultimately by the selected form of that definition's distinguishing criterion. (3) Therefore, just as more than one definition of a shtetl can coexist, each with a different form of the distinguishing criterion, so more than one valid dating of the first shtetl can coexist.     

THE AMBIGUITIES OF EXTERNAL MINORITY PROTECTION

This article focuses on the special and prominent place that the “Jewish question” occupied in the general discussion about Russian modernisation in the pre‐1914 period, both in American society and in the arena of US–Russian relations. It analyses the role that anti‐Jewish violence in Russia had in effecting a dramatic shift in the way Americans viewed the Russian Empire, which was being depicted by the American Jews and the leaders of the crusade for a “Free Russia” as a barbarous oppressor of political dissent and a savage persecutor of religious, national, and ethnic minorities. American society’s reaction to anti‐Jewish violence in the Russian Empire at the turn of the twentieth century helped, on the one hand, to shape the idea of the American belief that the United States bore special responsibility for carrying out reforms in Russia, and, on the other hand, to place relations between the two countries within such binary oppositions as “light and darkness,” “civilization and barbarity,” “modernity and medievalism,” “democracy and authoritarianism,” “freedom and slavery,” “the West and the Orient.” The article uses a broad range of verbal and graphic sources from the American press and new sources from archival collections. These sources help to illustrate one of the author’s principal tenets which holds that the United States’ view of the foreign policy of the Russian Empire was a result of the Americans’ projection of their own vision of the nature of the US foreign policy. In their official and public discourses, Americans considered Russia’s foreign policy an extension of Russia’s political regime. This study examines US foreign policy as a vital sphere in which national identity is redefined and reaffirmed and gives an opportunity to draw attention to the cultural and ideological dimensions of Russian–American relations, to understand the origins of dualistic American myths about Russia that have proven so enduring, and to demonstrate how a demonised Russia serves to revitalise American nationalism and how the Russian “Other” was used, in part, to construct the American “Self.”     

Between marginal and transnational: post-Soviet immigration in Hebrew literature

The paper deals with Hebrew texts written by Post-Soviet immigrants: Alona Kimhi (Viktor and Masha), Boris Zeidman (Split Tongue) and Sivan Beskin (A Vocal Piece for a Jew, a Fish and a Choir). This study aims to analyze issues of narratives of belonging and construction of identity as reflected in their writings while applying a number of interpretational approaches: sociological criticism, cultural studies, and post-Colonial criticism. The discussion corresponds with studies of Russian-Jewish diaspora as well as general migrations studies, in particular to the questions of social disorientation and disintegration of the original identity, the re-construction of home and the conceptualization of space accompanied by nostalgic tendencies.